Dell'Arte's Rosina Trilogy

Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble

Summer 2015 Beaumarchais Trilogy

Baruch Performing Arts Center

Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble presents the Rosina saga.

Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble is back and more ambitious than ever. Artistic director Christopher Fecteau and his team have grown the company and brought us the most extensive summer festival to date, featuring three fully staged productions, two of which are relative rarities, and a Beaumarchais-themed concert. This time around they tackled one of the trajectories of the Figaro trilogy, or, in this case, what they’re calling the Rosina trilogy.

Rosina and her count unite.
Photo credit: Mark Baker

Il barbiere di Siviglia (1782)

Music by Giovanni Paisiello

Libretto by Giuseppe Petrosellini

August 15, 2015

Rather than start with Rossini’s more canonically performed version of Il barbiere di Siviglia, the first installment of the trilogy, Dell’Arte opted for the lesser known but no less delightful version of the same story by Giovanni Paisiello. And thank goodness, because really Rossini’s take gets overplayed. 

Of the three shows in the run, this one, sadly, was the weakest link. The production was overwrought with crazy costuming and elaborate makeup decisions that distracted from both the music and the story. Several of the singers seemed to have more of a background in musical theater than extensive exposure to operatic singing, and this showed. 

What Dell'Arte has always done well is keep to the basics and build from their strengths (musical excellence and effective direction), which has always allowed them to cover up any hint of amateurishness. Unfortunately, this maiden voyage in the trilogy just wasn't entirely the case. 

The Count and his hoodwinking schemes.
Photo credit: Mark Baker

Rosina (1980)

Music by Hiram Titus

Libretto by Barbara Field

August 28, 2015

Hiram Titus’s Rosina, which we saw second though it technically comes third in the trilogy, was the most exciting discovery of the series, and it was thought-provoking as a foray into “modern” opera. It turns out that it is not inspired by Beaumarchais’ original third installment at all and instead is the brainchild of the composer and his librettist, the playwright Barbara Field. And it is in many ways a product of its time.

Cherubino sings of times gone by.
Photo credit: Mark Baker

The setting is Madrid just a few years after the conclusion of Le nozze di Figaro, though Figaro and Susanna are nowhere to be found. Cherubino is an artist now, trying to make ends meet, and the Countess, Rosina, has abandoned her husband and run off with Cherubino whose child she has recently born. The opera opens in their humble garret as Cherubino puts the finishing touches on his latest painting, a Madonna and child portrait of Rosina and their infant son. It is Beaumarchais meets Puccini’s La boheme, in all its effects.

The whole opening section is mostly sung through, a nod to verismo, and punctuated by an exposition-heavy aria, in which Cherubino recounts some of their well-known backstory, which then evolves into a love duet between the artist and his lover Rosina. But the composer gives us hints early on that something isn’t quite right. Their duet features a plaintive, slightly off kilter oboe accompaniment that clues the audience in to the fact that the Countess isn’t in the right place. This is not where she belongs. Which is in fact precisely where the opera will eventually end up at the end of Act II a couple of hours later.

The libretto often borrows from the tradition of musical theater, even though Titus’s score is largely classically inspired. The whole package was far less modern and dissonant than I would have expected from a piece composed in the late 1970s and had it’s debut in 1980. Musically many moments resonate with echoes of Rossini and Mozart, especially in terms of its basic compositional form, which covers all of the classic bases from arias and duets to quartets. The end of Act I even climaxed in a sextet finale. It doesn't get much more classic than that. 

Cherubino and Rosina in love.
Photo credit: Karen Rich

The story may not fit squarely into the original Beaumarchais trilogy, but the message is perhaps just as counterculture as its revolutionary source material. The bourgeois individualist spirit in Beaumarchais is countered with an anti-establishment, anti-patriarchal energy that is of the independent feminist ilk in Barbara Field’s libretto. “From now on choices shall be pragmatic,” Rosina sings in the final finale at the end of Act II. When she agrees to return to the fold with the Count, she does so on the condition that she remain free of useless vows and will be free to reconsider her commitment at anytime. Call it a post-nup, or a pre-re-nup. Excellent soprano Marie Masters played this modern lady and carried the show. We discovered this singer in Dell’Arte’s production of Salieri’s Falstaff last year where Ms. Masters was a feisty force of nature as Ms. Ford. It was impressive to see her acting range in such a different and more mature character as Titus’s Rosina, all while confirming her vocal talents as a very promising bright soprano.  

In short, the Countess is done slumming it with a starving young artist no matter how charming he is. It’s time for a return to pragmatism, which is strangely prescient of Regan-era bourgeois values coupled with a renewed sense of her worth as an independent woman that bespeaks the Equal Rights Amendment movement of the time too. She is ready to return to the comforts of her life with the Count. The vie bohemienne just wasn’t doing it for her: schlepping water up to the garret, living on next to nothing, never able to afford the rent, constantly bothered by an unkempt and mustachioed landlady requesting payment, and a million other minor torments. She opts for her old life back. Though, she insists, now a worldly wise and independent willed woman, that she will go back to the Count only if he agrees to take her back with her bastard child and without the false vows of matrimony, no claims of eternal love, no promises that nobody can keep. Theirs will be a relationship of convenience that they are equally and independently engaged in. She even goes so far as to pass off her ruby ring, a memento from her initial wedding day, to the count’s ex-courtesan lover who has fallen in love with Cherubino and who will stay on with him (a nod to the Mozartian/DaPontian trick of switching couples?).

Pilar, Mendoza, Amparo, Cherubino and Rosina weather the storm.
Photo credit: Karen Rich

Rosina may be stronger now, but what happened to the grudge between Cherubino and the Conte. It has vanished here. If this was conceived as a sequel to The Marriage of Figaro, the second installment of the original trilogy, it blatantly disregards the premise of Beaumarchais’s third play (The Guilty Mother) that is supposed to take place about twenty years after The Marriage of Figaro and so about seventeen years after Titus and Field’s installment in the Figaro saga. One of the plot points that they do take up though is that Cherubino and the Countess end up having a love tryst, the result of which is in fact the love child at the center of The Guilty Mother. But, in the Beaumarchais, it was an affair that lasted only a night while the Count was away for business. They never ran away together and Cherubino never becomes a starving artist La Boheme-style. In fact, their son, Leon, is raised as the Count’s lawful progeny, even if the Count doubts his legitimacy. None of this would square up with the premise of this opera. The big reveal that Leon is in fact the love child of Cherubino and Rosina is at the center of the dramatic reconciliation of the Beaumarchais play, a twist that is rendered impossible by the fact that the Count is already accepting his wife and her bastard child back into his palace by the end of Field’s Rosina.

Elizabeth Bouk as Amparo.
Photo credit: Mark Baker

Barbara Field’s libretto demonstrates a solid grounding in classic drama conventions. Two of the main plot lines revolve around getting the girl back and getting the ring back. For Cherubino (here played with passion by tenor Christopher Lilley) the task at hand, the objective of his “master plan,” is to retrieve the ring he wasn’t supposed to pawn and return it to its rightful owner without her knowing that it’s gone. And, for the Count (Min Gu Yeo, a beautiful sounding baritone) the action revolves around getting his wife back.

Characters like Señor Mendoza (Korland Simmons) and the landlady Pilar (Kerry Gotschall) are walking archetypes to be employed to comic ends. The landlady’s susceptibility to flattery is one of the plot devices and the source of one of its funniest moments that was convincingly played. Simmons has a deft, happy-go-lucky sense of comic timing and an all around pleasing demeanor on stage that made him fun to watch. As he is prodded to lavish many ornate declarations of love on Gotschall’s mustachioed Pilar by being blindfolded, he gushes forth a profusion of flowery language thinking he was simply alone with his beloved Rosina. The blindfold only comes off once the set piece has gone too far. It is basic slapstick humor very gracefully executed.

Titus’s score is obviously in dialogue with his Mozartian and Rossinian forebears. His musical vocabulary rarely features the alienating dissonance of much modern music. Beautiful moments abound like the line in the contrabasso when Amparo the courtesan (Elizabeth Bouk) steps up to tell her life story in all frankness. But it kind of came out of nowhere, relying on an awkward transition to get there.

Amparo opens up about her sordid past.
Photo credit: Karen Rich

The narrative and dramatic vocabulary of the libretto, on the other hand, is less fluent and frequently lacks tact. Characters often state too much: the scourge of modern opera. Thinking of Mozart and the perfection of Da Ponte’s poetry makes much of the language here that the music is meant to serve seem baggy or trite. “The rent is spent,” was a particularly uninspired turn of phrase – one of the zingers of the evening. The count also has an aria where he repeats “hilarious” over and over and I kept wondering: What is so hilarious? Why was it hilarious? The hilarity of the finding your wife living with another younger man escaped me. It may have been many things, but hilarious doesn’t seem to me among them. Then there were all of these pithy exclamations that packed the message of a proverb but were too wordy to be considered folk wisdom let alone to be sung. At one point we hear: “Diplomacy is the art of making your enemies face off against each other so you don’t get injured” (or something to this effect). What a mouthful! It was awfully wordy! Proverbs and folk wisdom tend to pack a slightly more succinct punch.

Le nozze di Figaro (1786)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte

August 29, 2015

Rosina croons Porgi amor.
Photo credit: Dell'Arte Opera

Le nozze di Figaro was definitely the highlight of the festival. While it’s true that it’s hard for other composers and librettists to live up to the genius of the Mozart/Da Ponte combo, Dell’Arte’s rendition of Nozze was fresh and delicious, thanks to a solid cast of singers and wise direction choices.

Soprano Jennifer Townshend was an extremely compelling Countess. From the first notes of her Act II opener, Porgi amor, she had me hooked, and her Dove sono i bei momenti, in Act III, was incredibly moving and had me shedding copious tears. Dell’Arte clearly saved their hottest talent for Mozart. Olivia Betzen was a perfectly fiery Susanna who definitely helped carry the ensembles with her soaring soprano. In her duets with Townshend’s Countess, she also held her own and really gave her something to sing off and sing into. They had good chemistry as the knowing women who are able to outsmart their men since this time Figaro is out of the loop and more powerless than he was in the prequel though he is no less cocky about his quick-wittedness. 

Susanna crossdresses poor Cherubino.
Photo credit: Brian Long 

Baritone Rodolfo Nieto in the role of Figaro had a captivating stage presence and, notwithstanding some pronunciation missteps from time to time, was vocally solid throughout, particularly impressive how he managed to wrap his mouth around Figaro’s most challenging rapid fire lines particularly in Aprite un po’ gli occhi. Mezzo Heather Jones as Cherubino had excellent Italian and great acting chops, delivering the paggio’s showstopping arias with a mischievous freshness and enthusiasm that are the essence of this character. Baritone John Callison successfully played the Count as entitled arrogant and lust. His rendition of Vedrò mentre io sospiro among the highlights of the evening. Bass-baritone Michael Spaziani as Don Bartolo delivered an excellent and thundering La vendetta. After thoroughly enjoying her in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea two years ago, mezzo Alison Cheeseman didn’t have as much to work with here as she did in the role of Nero back then but she was a terrific Marcellina, both vocally and acting-wise. It is truly exciting to watch talented singers like her grow. 

As to the production and direction, the sets were essential but functional and the blocking was pretty traditional for a Nozze, doing justice to the theatrical twists and turns of the plot. In the costume department, Figaro and Susanna make their entrance in ordinary contemporary street clothes suggesting a modern take. Still, there was not much class distinction made between the upper and lower crusts as all in all the cast seemed dressed more for a rehearsal than for closing day of the run. Only the countess seems to exude an elegance pertaining to her status and class. It was also a nice touch to have her most of the time pouring herself and downing full calices of wine, so as to drown her sorrows. The casual vibe of the costumes, however, did not distract from Wolfie’s brilliant music, which the cast and Metamorphosis Orchestra embodied at a very high level. 

Rosina reunites with a repentant husband.
Photo credit: Brian Long

The nine-year-old girl sitting behind us, who was dressed in her cutest going-out-on-the-town dress, was quite thoroughly entertained. At the end of the show we overheard her saying: “Best night ever!” Not once did her attention fade as she was glued to the action all night. And so were we. The cast brought life to this masterpiece of a score with great pacing and verve. 

– Lei & Lui

Happy endings for one and all.
Photo credit: Dell'Arte Opera

Dell'Arte Opera's Artistic Director, Christopher Fecteau

A Tiny yet Mighty Macbeth

Verdi's Macbeth

Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble 

August 24, 2014 - East 13th Street Theater

The scheming couple
Photo credit: Brian Long

Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble has done it again. Maestro Christopher Fecteau’s adaptation of Verdi’s score to the chamber setting worked beautifully. The small orchestra of just 20 musicians managed to convey Verdi’s firepower and grandiosity with a fierce intensity that literally made the air vibrate in the tiny space of the East 13th Street Theater. Counterintuitively, the intimate setting amplified the Verdian experience, making it more visceral and essential. Many times throughout the performance I felt the shivers run up my spine from the sheer haunting power of the score, a feeling that I did not experience when seeing Macbeth in a big house like the Met.

Ambizioso spirto, tu sei Macbetto
Photo credit: Brian Long

I was all tingles when soprano Mary Ann Stewart as Lady Macbeth took the stage for her first big aria (Ambizioso spirto, tu sei Macbetto) and came out larger than life. Initially she may have come out a bit too big, especially as she hit the notes in the higher range with a near brutal violence considering the intimacy of the black box space of the Classic Stage Company theater on East 13th Street, but this could also just be interpreted as part of her character – an almost vampiric femme fatale with an unwieldy will to power. Her initial vocal fireworks were so powerful that I can understand why Macbeth might be accustomed to feeling his hair stand up on end, as he sings elsewhere though about his encounter with the witches (Sento rizzarmi i capelli). I know that the hair on the back of my neck bristled as she burst into megalomaniacal song over the cryptic promise of a regal future for her husband. A promise that she very much intends to make good on.

Lady Macbeth on the verge of a nervous breakdown
Photo credit: Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble

Stewart’s Lady Macbeth only improved over time. I feel like by the end she inhabited her voice with more and more control, and continued to tailor it to the context of the space better and better by the time she got to her famous sleepwalking aria in Act IV. She was as haunting as ever. Startling to see such a powerful woman fall from such heights and sink so low. As Verdi wrote some of the most dynamic music not for the eponymous male lead but for Lady Macbeth, this is really her opera. Stewart brought this paradoxically tragic figure to life.

King for a little bit
Photo credit: Brian Long

Baritone Jason Plourde as Macbeth had good stage presence and inhabited this challenging character convincingly. Some of his vowels in the Italian dropped out a bit but all in all his was a solid performance, growing particularly strong in Act III when the prophecies start to tragically come true. In the final act Plourde’s singing was raging and his acting intense, powerfully conveying Macbeth’s downward spiral journey.

Who's pushing whom?
Photo credit: Brian Long

I found it interesting that Verdi’s Macbeth needs so little coaxing from his overbearing wife in order to commit the initial crime. The opera streamlines most of their early sexually charged quibbling over whether or not to act on the prophecies of the weird sisters. Musically her character far and away outshines her husband in terms of character and willfulness, complexity and depth, however, in terms of the narrative Macbeth acts more of his own mind especially in committing the first crime, which is slightly at odds with the most common portrayal of the Shakespearean source material, not to mention the fact that it clashes with a weak or indecisive representation of Macbeth in his first series of encounters with the witches in the aftermath of battle. Macbeth in Verdi demands to be played as even more of a bear and a beast and a brute from the get go. Even if the thought to overthrow the king only dawns on him by the power of suggestion, first and foremost by the witches but later also by his wife, by that time, in Verdi’s version he seems to have already made up his mind to go through with it. And even then, the vision of the dagger with its handle pointed toward him seems to be far more the sign on which he acts, not the prodding of his alpha femme wife.

Banco, must thou die so soon?
Photo credit: Brian Long

Why does our favorite singer always have to die so soon? After dying early as Seneca in last year’s Poppea, bass Hans Tashjian prematurely left us again as Banco (Banquo) in this year’s Macbeth. Aside from Lady Macbeth’s magnetic yet frightening stage presence, Tashjian was on another level with respect to the rest of the cast. His enunciation was excellent and his bass instrument was low and bold and resounding. This singer is growing more confident and expressive every time we see him, really an artist to keep an eye on and always a pleasure to see. Now can we please give him more extensive roles? Where are all the bass leads?

The perfectly weird sisters
Photo credit: Brian Long

Monica Niemi (soprano), Jackie Hayes (alto) and Elizabeth Bouk (mezzo) were the perfect witches, their choreographies precise and their singing piercingly scary (as it should be). Musically their part needs to be played (and sung) with an almost breathless sense of urgency and in conductor Christopher Fecteau’s hands it was executed just so. Director Myra Cordell used the chorus of witches to very good effect as they just kept appearing (even when the score does not expressly call for them), emphasizing the haunting role of fate and superstition that runs throughout the opera. They served to deliver the dagger in Macbeth’s vision as well as to conjure the corpse of the dead Banquo to rise to his feet in the haunting Act II banquet scene. Written as a chorus of forty in the original Verdi score, their reduction to three lacked none of their signature bewitching sense of urgency. Not only were they hypnotic and scary but as three they were also more faithful to the original Shakespeare.

The ensemble/comprimari (Isaac Assor, Andy Berry, Jonathan Dauermann, Nathalie Dixon, Milica Nikcevic, Milan Rakic) did an amazing job in the chorus sections. It was surprising to see how only six singers could effectively convey the firepower of a Verdian chorus. When in their solo parts, I was particularly impressed by Andy Berry and Milica Nikcevic. Bass Berry’s Italian was excellent and his instrument soothingly powerful. Mezzo Nikevic had a clear piercing musicality, especially in her prophecy bit, that left me wanting to hear more from her.

Macbeth and his men
Photo credit: Brian Long

Last but not least, a special mention for very young actor Gabriel Griezelj as Banco’s son Fleanzio. He had great stage presence for his innocent role and added the perfect dramatic touch when deftly running away from Macbeth’s men sent to kill him and his father. Griezelj was so good that he'll be debuting at the Met in this same role in October!

Young Gabriel Griezelj in action as Fleanzio

It was another triumph of intimate opera. For what was billed as a semi-staged production, the Dell’Arte Opera cast and crew delivered an awfully captivating performance. The costumes by Nina Bova were simple but suggestive. Every scene was acted out vividly. While there were few props or sets of any kind, the spectacle still whisked us away. A great conclusion to NYC’s summer opera season.

- Lui & Lei

An explosively intimate Verdi
Photo credit: Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble

The Revelation of Salieri's Falstaff

Antonio Salieri’s Falstaff, ossia le tre burle

Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble

August 14, 2014 – East 13^th Street Theater

Falstaff puts his moves on
Photo credit: Richard Termine / The New York Times

Lei: Who knew Salieri was so much fun? I’m not sure why he rarely gets performed anymore. It has often been said that if it were not for Mozart, Salieri would have been the greatest of his day. I don’t know about that, but experiencing his Falstaff (1799) firsthand sure made it crystal clear that the two composers were contemporaries. Salieri sounded very Mozart-y (or is it the other way around? Still, this opera opened nine years after Wolfie's death in 1791). Either way, we immensely enjoyed this opera as delivered by Dell’Arte OperaEnsemble. It was sheer entertainment that elicited a handful of belly laughs and kept us on the edge of our seats to see what came next. The musical range of the score was thrilling: stock-in-trade opera buffa comic arias alternated with passages of tragic desperation and playful romantic duets, all the while it maintained an airy lightness at its core that made this opera a truly a pleasure to discover.

A very '80s Herne the Hunter
Photo credit: Brian Long 

Lui: Salieri introduced Shakespeare’s larger-than-life loser-in-love to the operatic stage almost exactly a century before Verdi who famously turned to the same material at the end of his career. While the works of both composers proceed along the same plot lines borrowed from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Salieri’s version is by far the more streamlined of the two. For example, the love affair between Fenton and Nannetta is conspicuously missing here, and as a result the whole show skips along at a quick and sprightly pace. Other than the missing young love story, most of the major differences between the two merely come down to a change in focus.

Lei: While for Verdi the main focus is really the Falstaff character with his comic but also tragic sides, Salieri presents a Falstaff that (at least musically) is largely just comic. The tragic star of Salieri’s opera is arguably Mr. Ford, who provides an emotional counterpoint to the foibles of the great John Falstaff, especially in the first half of the opera. In Salieri’s version, Mr. Ford definitely has more airtime than he does in Verdi and seems to ground the emotional core of the opera with his numerous passionate arias of a distressed jealous husband.

Jealousy gets the best of Mr. Ford
Photo credit: Brian Long

Lui: One great scene of dilation in the Salieri score is the aria “Or gli affannosi palpiti” that lends insight into the inner-workings of the jealous mind. It bears an undeniably Mozartian influence – plaintive bars borrowed from Così fan tutte’s Ferrando crossed with the melancholic melodies of Don Giovanni’s Don Ottavio. Distraught and flustered by the thought that his wife could actually be cheating on him with the loose cannon Falstaff, Mr. Ford ponders his options. Director Louisa Proske stages this moment beautifully. With the house lights off, she places him in a single spotlight with his back up against a black brick wall in the back of the theater. All eyes are on him as he gives us a glimpse into his troubled soul. The music slows down a bit here, which allowed tenor Erik Bagger to really dig into the fuller potential of his youthful instrument, despite some of his vocal limitations during some of the faster passages. In fact, this is perhaps the moment in which he gave us some of his best singing of the night. I was thoroughly captivated as he progressed from pained despair to near frenzied madness only to decide that he will bear arms to seek revenge on his wife and her liaison and anybody else who might get in his way. It was a powerful scene that added depth to an otherwise light and jaunty comedy.

The fairies teach Falstaff a lesson
Photo credit: Brian Long

Lei: There was never a dull moment in Louisa Proske’s staging. Set in the 1980s, this stylized production was extremely effective in each of the simple effects it sought to accomplish. With just a few props and excellent direction, Proske’s managed to create a whole universe of suburban bourgeoisie (the Fords’ plush sofas) that clashed with Falstaff’s squalid decadence (one wobbly chair). Both scenes set in Mistress Ford’s bedroom were pure comic delight. Proske’s move to make Falstaff mimic an ottoman under a throw was simple yet charming. And the tables are neatly turned in a perfect act of poetic justice when on the second go around it is Mr. Ford who ends up under a pile of dirty laundry. The finale in the woods worked equally well. The leading ladies sport bunny-ears as they cajole a ridiculous Falstaff in his yellow jumpsuit and huge horns, before they go on to lead a daunting group of fairies in green ponchos and carnival masks to teach the horned buffoon a lesson. The work of choreographer Sam Pinkelton was also very successful throughout, with dancing that was high energy, accurate and in beautiful harmony with Salieri’s score, from the disco moves in Act I’s suburban house party to the fairies’ feast in the finale. There was nothing amateur at all about this low budget production, at least in cast A’s performance of it.

The irresistible John Falstaff
Photo credit: Brian Long

Lui: Shakespeare’s Falstaff is one of the bard’s most charming creations and baritone Gary Ramsey embodied him with panache. Though his Italian could use a little work, his acting was brilliant (and not surprisingly so, since Ramsey came to opera from the acting world). His Falstaff is potbellied and, with few exceptions, only ever dons the same light blue leisure suit and his signature canary yellow tuxedo shirt with its frilly front and a dashing bow tie. He is the self-absorbed creep par excellence. And boy could he shake his thing! Rather than accentuate the disconnect between his former life in the court of Henry IV and his new life in the provinces, Ramsey’s Falstaff in Proske’s rendition is out of place inasmuch as his whole sensibility is leftover from his salad days in the 1970s, an earlier era when he was potentially “in his prime.” He now finds himself a swinger stranded in the brave new world of the 1980s, amidst the working class stiffs of the suburbs no less.

Lei: After Falstaff, soprano Marie Masters in the role of Mistress Ford truly stole the show. Masters is a fiery and feisty force of nature. She owned her numbers musically, singing her devious wiles both alone and in duet with Mistress Slender, and she acted up a storm. Masters played the faux-docile wife, the slinky seductress, the devious schemer, not to mention the clueless German bimbo, and every step of the way her stage presence was a thrill to watch. She really brought the role to life like a pro, with equally excellent Italian and German diction.

Mistress Ford runs the show
Photo credit: Brian Long

Mr. Slender and his sweater
Photo credit: Brian Long

Lui: Playing second fiddle to Mr. Ford’s quasi-slighted husband, Mr. Slender owned in every way his first act aria “Venga pure il cavaliere.” Baritone Scott Lindroth embodied the dweeby 1980s suburban husband with an adroit comic touch. The aria features an extended passage in which Mr. Slender, who suspects that Falstaff is up to no good with the local women, mimics a flirty conversation between Falstaff and his own Mistress Slender. Lindroth’s voice was explosive yet full and round as he alternated between the male and female roles in the fanciful dialog that plays out in his mind, though it was particularly mellifluous as he impersonated with gusto the full-chested Falstaff, whom he imagines in the act of putting the moves on his poor, innocent yet intransigent wife. Mistress Slender and her husband both let me wanting to hear more from them. They do not get enough airtime to showcase their talents. Heather Antonissen pulled off Mistress Slender’s big first act aria, “Vendetta, sì, vendetta,” with power and poise. Her voice rang out in the intimate space clean and clear, her Italian pronunciation was excellent and expressive. I would have liked to see her talent showcased in another couple of arias. In her ensemble pieces and duets, she always blended voices nicely with the rest of the cast, especially with Mistress Ford.

Mistress Slender plots her revenge
Photo credit: Brian Long

Lei: Dell’Arte reconfirmed itself as a top-notch independent opera company. Everything they do is thoroughly thought out and beautifully executed. This is the third Dell’Arte production we see (after L’incoronazione di Poppea and La clemenza di Tito last year) and they yet again breathed fresh air into opera, with innovative costuming and staging all while remaining true to the core of the work and delivering very serious musical performances, at times even with sparkles of extraordinary brilliance and promise. The efforts of artistic director Christopher Fecteau to adapt full orchestra scores to the chamber setting are truly impressive, and allow this opera company to perform great works on a smaller scale – truly a gift for young performers and audiences alike. Can’t wait to catch their Macbeth this week and see how they’ll make Verdi fit into the tiny East 13th Street Theater.  

– Lei & Lui

The 1980s are back. And they're bad!
Photo credit: Brian Long